On The Register website we can read an interesting article on Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) and EMI Germany calling their customers pirates. Here's part of a letter send to an EMI customer complaining about the fact that his copy-protected CDs won't play on his equipment:
"Dear Mr. xxx, We will refrain from addressing the points in your email that are clearly erroneous. We also don't want to bore you with a lengthy explanation of why the music industry is forced to use copy protection measures, even though we would prefer to do something else. Only this much: There are 250 Million blank CDRs and tapes bought and used this year for copying music in comparison to 213 Million prerecorded audio media. This means the owners are only being paid for 46 per cent of the musical content. For a comparison: In 1998 almost 90% of all audio media was paid for. Even without a degree in economics everyone should realise that such trends will result in the music industry ceasing to exist. Only one measure can be used against widespread cloning of prerecorded audio media by burning CDRs: copy protection! This is also the reason why record companies increasingly have to protect their CDs. An alternative solution for stopping this abuse is unfortunately not within sight. But we fear that these facts don't interest you at all. Because these measures mean the end of free music, something that must cause you much grief. |
"Should you really have a problem with playing the CD in question, we would like you to name the exact model of your player. Then we can compare this model with the list we have of players that our CDs run on without any trouble. Then we'll see if the problem really is the copy protection or if there are completely different reasons. The case you are reporting that even multiple players refuse to function can, in our experience, only originate from the realm of fairytales. The copy protection we employ is state of the art, this means there's nothing better available to date. If there will be something better, we won't hesitate to use it. Problems with playing on common CD-players are minimal, but every now and then it happens that copy protected CDs don't work on a player. We forward these cases immediately to our copy protection-provider, which is trying hard to adapt the technology accordingly and solve the problems.
It's simply a known fact that many copy-protected audio CDs can cause problems even when they're played in standard audio equipment but these companies seem to think the protections they're using are flawless. The original German reply can be read here. The English translation can be read on The Register website.
Source: The Register
